Our say: Trump budget aims blow at Chesapeake Bay

Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun

The Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, now a National Historic Landmark, is being preserved through a partnership among the City of Annapolis, The United States Lighthouse Society and its Chesapeake Chapter, the Annapolis Maritime Museum, and Anne Arundel County.

The Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse, now a National Historic Landmark, is being preserved through a partnership among the City of Annapolis, The United States Lighthouse Society and its Chesapeake Chapter, the Annapolis Maritime Museum, and Anne Arundel County.

(Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun)

Our say: To make America great again, federal government must participate in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay

Congress has the power of the purse, and a U.S. president's proposed budget is less a serious spending plan than a statement of priorities. The Trump White House seems to realize this. Otherwise, why title the administration's first spending plan: "America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again"?

But the document raises questions: Is the Chesapeake Bay part of America? Does someone think environmentalists and federal and state officials have been trying to clean up the bay for decades solely for the benefit of foreign visitors? Is there a definition of "greatness" that includes dead zones, sediment and nutrient pollution, and depleted populations of fish and crabs?

National greatness apparently mandates an astonishing 31 percent cut in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget. As a small part of that, the spending plan zeroes out the $73 million appropriation for the Annapolis-based Chesapeake Bay Program, started under President Ronald Reagan in 1983 to bring together federal and state efforts to restore the bay — efforts that, judging by the latest environmental report cards, are finally starting to bear fruit.

This is not a big program. Its website shows 92 staff members, some of them actually with other federal agencies, state governments, universities and private contractors. But it represents the crucial federal role in getting the six diverse bay watershed states to work together on the current pollution reduction plan, which culminates in a set of goals for 2025.

The budget blueprint says the spending plan "eliminates funding for specific regional efforts such as the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the Chesapeake Bay and other geographic programs ... The budget returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its higher national priorities."

The EPA has "higher" priorities than cleaning up the waters of the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay, both national treasures of immense economic value? What would those priorities be?

For both the bay and the Great Lakes, water quality depends on the actions of many different jurisdictions, making a strong federal role essential. Decades of bay cleanup efforts demonstrated that relying on voluntary, uncoordinated state efforts is worse than futile. Unfortunately, this reality goes against the ideological grain of the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, who, as Oklahoma attorney general, took part in an unsuccessful legal challenge to the bay plan.

A 2014 study by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation put the economic benefits from the lands and waters of the bay region at $107 billion annually as of 2009 — and estimated that implementing the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint would increase that amount by $22.5billion a year. So the federal government can't afford $73 million a year for the Chesapeake Bay Program? Seriously?

We expect cooler heads in Congress to prevail. But while we wholeheartedly agree with the administration on the importance of a strong defense, this country will be in big trouble if it's governed by people who think national greatness means guns, tanks and ships — and very little else.